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Mark Hamill on Star Wars and whether he’ll use a lightsaber in The Last Jedi

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the role of Luke Skywalker brought its young lead cinematic immortality. Having struggled with his legacy, he swapped fame for a career as a character actor. This year, he has returned to the Star Wars universe. GQ anoints the last Jedi...

Stuart McGurk is GQ's Associate Editor and the 2017 PPA Magazine Writer of the Year. Follow him on Twitter @stuartmcgurk

Tuesday 12 September 2017

Sitting in his lounge, in the Malibu house that he and his wife have expanded from a one-bedroom bungalow to something closer to the Skywalker home planet that you would expect, a garden stretching behind him and the Pacific stretching beyond that, Mark Hamill, now 65, has one thing he wants to get off his chest: They could have told him he was only in The Force Awakens for 72 seconds.

Rather, Disney had simply told him that he needed to get in shape and so, for a year and a half, for two days a week, a personal trainer would turn up and an ever-so-slightly rotund former Jedi would be put through his paces. He assumed he would have a starring role. When he read the script, he kept thinking, Any second now. Then, when he finally got to the fight scene where a lightsaber wobbled in the snow, he thought, Brilliant, what an introduction! Nope. He met Rey (Daisy Ridley), his presumed apprentice, in the very last scene as she handed him his lightsaber. It was not a speaking part.

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Little did I know Star Wars would never go away - that it would consume my life

"I had some issues with the way that was handled. It was a shock. And JJ [director Abrams] had actually told me, 'Don't turn to the last page!'"

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When he got the script for the follow-up, this year's The Last Jedi, he wasn't taking any chances: "I turned right to the last page and read it backwards!"

Still, he says, at least he got in pretty good shape.

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In the years since the original trilogy, Hamill has grown used to being out of the spotlight. He always wanted to be a character actor and so has taken great pleasure in theatre roles and voice-acting for animation and video games, even winning a Bafta for the latter. "You can lose yourself in a character," he says of voice roles such as The Joker. "You're not just seen as Mark Hamill."

This time, he says, he was far more aware of posterity's gaze. "Because you go onto that soundstage, you see that gigantic camera inches from your face that's going to be putting things down forever. Normally, you go to the movies, then you move on. It will have a shelf life. Little did I know it would never go away. I didn't know it would consume my life the way it has."

See all our incredible GQ Men Of The Year 20th Anniversary issue cover stars

The Last Jedi, it's fair to say, will see him enjoying much more of a starring role, but the film is somewhat split - between the scenes with himself and Ridley, and those with everyone else. "They're like different movies in one. You know, we're in this bucolic setting, a respite from the pew-pew-pew in spaceships." So, like The Empire Strikes Back then? "Very much so."

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When he first read the script, he disagreed with pretty much all of it and told the director, Rian Johnson, exactly that. He later realised that he was simply surprised by it and that was a good thing: "Yeah, the unexpected is good, especially in a Star Wars story."

I'll always think of Carrie Fisher in the present tense. It adds an air of melancholy that the movie doesn't deserve

Still, he was nervous. "I said to [Johnson], 'I have to be frank, I am terrified. It's too big. It's too high-profile.' And you know what he said? 'I am too.' That really made me bond with him. He didn't have to admit that. I found it reassuring. We're all in the same boat."

Or, at least, most of them were, Harrison Ford having already checked out with a dramatic death in The Force Awakens. "He's wanted to die for so long! So when he came back I said, 'He's got his death!'" Why did he want to die? "I think he gets miffed about having Star Wars overemphasised on his CV, because it's such a good one. And he's too rich and too cranky." He'd wanted to die in The Empire Strikes Back, says Hamill, and only returned for Return Of The Jedi, he suspects, after another character, Lando Calrissian, was brought in as the original owner of his character's ship, the Millennium Falcon.

Sadly, the two are now down to one, after Carrie Fisher's death last December, just after filming had finished. Hamill's wife burst into the bedroom while he was sleeping, "and just said those terrible words, 'Carrie died.'" Has it sunk in? "No, I'll always think of her in the present tense. It adds an air of melancholy that the movie doesn't deserve."

For now, though, in Malibu, he's allowing himself to enjoy what's about to come - after decades away, he can finally enjoy the circus.

"I mean, I really have to suppress the giggles," he says. "Really, me, on the cover of GQ? I'm just loving it. And I think I'm appreciating it in a way now that I couldn't have in my twenties. In your twenties you're always thinking, 'What's next?' You know, I've gotta do this, and this, and this. Now, I'm just having a great time."

The Contrazoom video booth at GQ Men of the Year 2017

We've certainly downgraded the presidency. I mean, it's just appalling that he can't tell the truth

He hasn't seen the film yet, though he keeps bumping into directors who have. "It's funny. I bumped into Edgar Wright the other day and he was saying, 'You're going to be so pleased!' All those director guys get their buddies over and screen the whole thing."

In fact, the only thing that disturbs Hamill's present happiness is the current incumbent of the Oval Office, one Donald J Trump, with whom he duels 140 characters a time on Twitter, the light side versus the dark. And while his daughter wishes he wouldn't ("She says, 'If you tweet politically, you'll make half the country hate you!'"), he's decided, at 65, "I've earned the right to be cranky."

The US, he says, is currently in "uncharted territory. We've certainly downgraded the presidency. I mean, it's just appalling that he can't tell the truth."

But there is, of course, a resistance. And Hamill, naturally, has joined the fight.

"At least Darth Vader saw the error of his ways and repented," he points out. Can he see that happening with Trump?